xxxNEWS OF THE WEIRDxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

In rural Jiangsu province, some still believe that a well-attended funeral leads to a successful afterlife, but police have recently cracked down on the practice of hiring strippers to punch up attendance, according to an August Reuters dispatch.

Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia still celebrate a lunar-calendar oddity termed the “hungry ghost” month, during which the gates of hell supposedly open and create widespread fear. Many Buddhists seek to appease the ghosts (and acquire lucky lottery numbers) by offering them food and paper models of items they can use when they resume being dead.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD